butterthebuddha

Do you mind posting brief notes indicating how far the reading group has progressed after each meeting?

Thanks for taking the initiative to host this.

For PhD students, the masters is integrated into the 5 years they spend doing their PhD. They are expected to take courses as a "pre-candidate" and do primarily research after they pass their qualifying exams and become candidates.

Most Diophantine equations. Someone has already mentioned FLT above. Problems of this sort is almost one of the defining characteristics of number theory.

When people talk about different language, they mean more than just notation. For example, I can write "2 | 4" as "4 = 0 in Z/2Z". There is more than just a notational difference here.

A more non-trivial example: Say you want to say that 2 x 4 = 8. One way is to just write 2 x 4 = 8. Another way is to say that a finite set of cardinality 8 is the product of a finite set of cardinality 2 and cardinality 4 in the category of finite sets (in the sense that 8 satisfies the universal property of 2 x 4).

Concepts and ranges are pretty big too.

An argument for a smaller keyboard (and this is definitely a personal thing) is that I try my hardest to avoid using keys that are more than one key away from a finger in its resting position anyway (why---I really don't like having to move my hand physically, and I'm willing to pay the cost of additional latency with having more keys gated behind modifiers if it means I have to move my hand less). My day-to-day keyboard uses QMK, so it's really possible to make this work.

> Rot mathematics is where it goes wrong.

Not sure what you mean by "rot mathematics".

> Meta mathematics, abstract, detached from real life, as alot of the academy with its publish pr perish thinking ... that produces pain.

Some (including me) would say that the meta and abstract mathematics is most beautiful of all...

> saying weirdos hate logic is extremely dismissive to a lot of what I would call the human experience.

I think you misread the parent comment (although to be clear, I'm not defending it).

TAOCP?

This isn't true. Most mathematics published in journals is new.

Things are not so cut and dry. Rent in the college town my university is located in is high and people have to sign year-long leases the year before they actually occupy the apartment due to high demand. Forcing students to travel home places unnecessary hardship on them if they've already signed an expensive lease.